String Quartet No. 2 "Sommerweisen"
String Quartet No. 3

The Riga Quartet

Caprice 21635

I cannot think that there have been many phases in 20th-century music that have more successfully engendered ideas of peace and reconciliation than the so-called Baltic renaissance. After the warming asceticism of Arvo Part and the epic contrasts of Giya Kancheli, Latvian-born Peteris Vasks is a rather more tempered presence who, like his near- compatriots, uses elements of older musics in conjunction with 20th-century acerbity.

The two string quartets coupled here are fairly typical in their alternation of chorale and folk-like elements (especially No 3). Both glide down from the stratosphere, the Second (1984) on a bird-like flurry of trills, the Third (1995) on a more flush tonal plain, though - like the First - a marching figure soon disrupts the peace. The Second Quartet is the more reflective of nature; indeed, imitated bird sounds all but monopolise the second movement (even Hitchcock would have found them oppressive). The lyrical element is exemplified with maximum force in the first movement's hymn-like crescendo and the more chromatic Adagio of the Third Quartet.

Thinking in terms of performance values, it's fairly difficult to choose between the Riga Quartet and the Miami Quartet on Conifer. Both serve Vasks handsomely, though the Miami enjoy a more intimate acoustic and their finer-spun pooled tone lends a more ethereal quality to the quieter music. Conifer's clinching bonus is the boldly assertive First Quartet, a fascinating work from 1977 (revised 1997) that helps place its more introvert successors in a realistic perspective. On that count alone, it would earn my top vote.

Rob Cowan
(From: Gramophone, October 2000)